It is a matter of thresholds, of consequential bets over provisional non-trivial assessments, and of journalistic duty (taking note - the idea is not from the analyst but from sources; journalists take note that sources made statements).

Analysts work speculatively. And the results of the speculation are not trivial when supported by strong elements.

I think it means just that, which is why I used TL;DR? The article points out the correlation between mafia prevalence and lack of fentanyl overdoses and some speculation on whether those two things are connected.

TL;DR: ‘Correlation is not causation’ does not mean ‘correlation tells us nothing about causation.’

There is one "access free" paragraph in the page... "Police are coming to the conclusion".

I assume drugs that are potent in tiny quantities leave less metabolites.

From what I understand this uses overdose numbers. They should also not be assumed to be comparable across countries (recording practices vary widely), but if they tell the same story as wastewater monitoring there may be something to it.

Does wastewater drug monitoring account / offset for constipation caused by drug use?

There isn't anything to measure if the poop is unable to leave the end-user.

the internet is full of let-me-tell-you-a-quick-story like this one. so AI can and nothing is over, ma dude. nothing will ever be over.

Expand? This is part of plot to The Godfather. Not what you'd call exotic, I'd think?

Can anybody share a non-paywalled link?

Soon after John Stewart Mill we assessed that markets are not perfect.

Accelerations in the different directions of bounded incentives create as-if Brownian motions, - not the stability towards optimality of a perfect organic model.

Or: what you write is rational, but people are easily not... The supply side should disappear from the market when irrational, but changes are slow..

When the risk is the benefit things get weird

They still traffic heroin though, which is not stellar for customer's life expectancy.

Junk food dont have a chance to kill a person on first try or high chances to kill them withih a year or so.

If its cheap enough to be worth letting a few customers churn, then profits will be positive

Might want to look at the cigarette industry

You just need to keep your customers alive long enough.

70% of food in the supermarket is ultra processed. But as long as people make it to 65 years old they are still good customers. That is still 50 years of sales.

And: shaking the scene in a way that will attracts too much attention, including crackdowns, is very bad for business.

There's been a criminal civil war raging between HAs and every other smaller org that wants to expand (look at Blood Family Mafia specifically, Arab Power as well). HAs have lost some feathers in pretty gruesome ways. They're all older and neglected to replenish the ranks in order to preserve prestige. Street gangs didn't. If I'm competing in that world, I'm funding the underdogs until leadership trembles, then we make a deal. I believe we're at that point now. All those groups - including the Sicilians - have all been slowly invalidated and Angels are appearing more stable/powerful these days (even though we just outlawed their colours - but even that gives them prestige).

I'll be honest, this was helpful for me even as someone who lives about 2km from the Quebec border. I was uncertain as you don't often see it in the Hacker News context.

Why not goverment "is keeping fentanyl out of italy"?

If you would sell unaproved medication during covid, you would get several years in prison.

Why someone who sells unapproved medication without prescription, gets released and can keep selling this stuff? Medication thst kills people!!!

I'm afraid some crime syndicates have found out they can just steal it from hospitals, some 80 vials went missing from the ospedale israelitico in Rome during the summer and there are already reports of an increase of users in the outskirts of the city..